Marg’s Best Money-Saving Tips

One of my friends’ mothers who hails from Saint John, Canada, is a practiced saver. She grew up during the lean days, raised three children, and is a retired home economics teacher. She’s learned from experience multiple ways to save, and she and her daughter have shared some of her tips.

For entertaining there are lots of ways to save money.

• Serve food on the plate in the kitchen and bring to your guests instead of serving home style. This saves on table space and washing extra serving dishes, but it also allows the host to portion the food so that it goes further.
• Resist the pressure to have young children have birthday parties out. Home birthday parties with hot dogs and home-made cake along with games and small toy prizes are just as much fun as renting the bowling alley for more money.
• Have pot luck gatherings with assigned dishes so everyone shares the work and cost, or have a barbecue and ask people to bring their own protein/meat to grill.
• Buy an expensive but smaller cut of meat for the dinner, but complement it with less expensive side dishes to fill everyone’s stomach, e.g., corn bred, mixed green salads, or cold slaw.
• Have the more expensive menu for adults and save by offering the children hot dogs or other less expensive dishes which they’ll enjoy more anyway.
• Buy wine in large bottles or volume cartons, or serve the more expensive wine first, using the less expensive wine for refills, once the guests’ taste buds have been dulled by indulgence.
• A small glass of tomato juice served with a few small celery sticks can be an inexpensive and different type of appetizer.

You can save on gifts, too, says Marg.

• Keep a gift box filled with dollar buys or sale buys. Have onhand reduced-priced cards and note paper, candles, picture frames, soaps, small acrylic trays, tea towels and the like to pick out for last-minute hostess gifts or small friend gifts.
• Buy Raffia and use paper bags stamped with designs to wrap that last-minute gift rather than go out and buy expensive gift bags and bows.
• Buy everyone on your list the same item for their birthdays or Christmas. Items like pajamas, bathrobes, slippers, pillows, or books can be bought in bulk on sales. You only have to select size, color, and titles to make them appropriate for each person. This approach saves time, too.
• One of Marg’s great ideas for wedding gifts is to give away one of her own weddings gifts. When she no longer needs all her china cups or silver trays, etc, she polishes and cleans and sends it along as a gift with a card that explains how she had received this 40 years ago on her own wedding day and she writes why she wants to share the joy and memories with the new bride. (Are you dabbing your eyes yet?)

Marg’s ideas about food savings.

• When you go shopping for the day or are traveling, pack a lunch. The extra treat can be an ice cream afterward or a mid-morning coffee and donut. The treats are fun and less expensive than buying lunch. You also save time for browsing or driving.
• Don’t buy mason jars for canning. Save food jars with screw-on tops and put your food stuffs in those with paraffin wax. (You can also, as you use your canned food, save the paraffin you remove, clean it, and melt it to reuse next year.)
• Use powered milk for baking.
• Whole milk can substitute for cream, saving on money and reducing fat.
• If you cook a chicken, make it last. Use it for chicken salad and chicken soup. You can freeze the carcass to boil down for soup weeks later.

Marg has other frugal tips, too.

• Instead of buying plastic bins at Wal-Mart or K-Mart, ask at stores that sell in bulk or vendors who have bulk shipments of food to give you or sell you their large plastic shipment pails. These have covers and can be washed easily. If the people don’t just give them to you to save on their disposal, they usually will sell them for only a dollar. You can use them to store flour, cereal, or dog food, as examples.
• Don’t buy flowers at the flower center; pick up lilies, columbine, black-eyed-susans and more along the roadside and plant in your flower bed. These plants will also be hardier and need less watering.
• Brew your tea in a tea pot with tea bags. You can get at least two strong cups from one bag.
• Turn your dishwasher off before the drying cycle begins. Open the door and air dry, saving on energy.
• Buy small mesh laundry bags at the Dollar Store and wash bras and panty hose in them to avoid stretching and snagging so you can get extra wear out of them.
• Have a yard sale annually. You can save space and make money.
• Use motion activated night lights.
• Hang your clothes out to dry or use a drying rack indoors whenever you can.
• Don’t throw that old shirt away. First cut off the buttons and store in color-sorted jars. Then cut the material into rags for various dirty jobs. If the shirt isn’t too warn, hem it and cut the arms shorter for beach cover for your children.
• Don’t throw a pair of shoes away before you remove good laces to wash and reuse or use to tie up loose cords for storing without tangling.
• Both toilet paper and paper towel cardboard rolls can be saved to keep electric cords out of the way. If your lamp has a long length of straggling cord which can be unsightly and unsafe, re loop the cord and put in the rolls as a sleeve to keep the cord neatly behind a piece of furniture or a desk.
• Save and rewash the Styrofoam trays used to package meats. Later cover with a dollie and put baked goods on it, wrap with Saran warp and a bow, and you have holiday treats to go.
• Soap lasts longer if you take it out of its packaging and let it dry.
• Waxed cereal bags on the inside of the cardboard package can be saved and cut to use as liners in your baking pans. Why buy Pam cooking spray?

Thanks, Marg. We hope other readers share their invaluable savings tips with us, too.